The Ledger

11.12 Teenage Wasteland

Extraordinarily well-written episode (11.12) in which a Chinese food delivery man is brutally murdered by a group of middle-class, thrill-seeking teenagers, and McCoy and Lewin have to decide whether to seek the death penalty against the only 18-year-old among them.

The episode begins with a couple of painters discovering the delivery man's body outside the door of a basement apartment. The body has been brutally beaten, and there is blood everywhere. The back of the man's skull has been pulverized. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The focus their investigation on a homeless man who was known to sleep outside the apartment, which had been unoccupied for some time. They track him down through some previous tenants, who mention that he said he was a veteran. They get his prints, trace them through a federal database, talk to his sister, and find him outside a bodega. Under questioning, and for a reward of chocolate donuts, he says he was rousted from the area by a group of teenagers: four boys and one girl. He says the girl had a key to the apartment. The super to the building says he gave the key to a "tile guy," but the tile guy says he returned the key as promised. He did, however, see a girl come in as he was leaving, saying she was looking for "Mitch or Mike." The detectives re-question the apartment's previous tenants and learn that the girl is obe of the tenant's younger sister, and they had lent her the key so she could hang out with her boyfriend, Mitch.

Mitch is evasive during questioning, but eventually rolls on his group of friends, blaming them for the death. They pick everyone up, and they are arraigned en masse, but each defendant moves for a separation, so they can be tried as individuals. Mitch, the original suspect, is the only one above age 18, and when he's telling Lewin about the arraignment, McCoy tells Lewin that based on the facts of the case, he wants to seek the death penalty. Lewin is taken aback, but McCoy is calmly insistent. He says the boy orchestrated the murder, has a previous juvenile record of violence, and deserves to die, based on the statute. Lewin argues that the boy is barely 18 and doesn't deserve the death penalty. But during this conversation, Carmichael takes a phone call that might render the whole debate moot: a judge approved a plea bargain in which Mitch pleads guilty and avoids the death penalty. McCoy is upset and appeals, arguing that he didn't have a chance to even present a motion for the death penalty, and that the defense had essentially short-circuited the legal process. The appellate judge agrees, the plea is voided, and the death penalty is back on the table.

This forces Lewin to make a deeper consideration about whether to execute the boy. She calls a meeting of "senior staff," a meeting I don't believe we've ever seen in the series: All the Executive ADAs, Carmichael, and Lewin meet to discuss whether to seek the death penalty. It's cool to see the "other McCoy's" and gives you a sense of the breadth of the DA's office. They debate various points related to the case, but only one senior ADA seems sympathetic to the defendant. Everyone else agrees that the death penalty should be sought. After much thinking, and a further conversation with Carmichael (who, as we know, is from Texas and likes to kill everybody), she decides to seek the death penalty. She announces this is a remarkable speech on the courthouse steps in which she says that although it goes against her personal beliefs, she feels that the statute requires the state to ask for capital punishment. She delivers her speech with a bit of a noble/grandiose tone, but it is very well written and effective.

After all this -- we don't even see the trial...we're just told the jury quickly returned a guilty verdict -- and we go straight to the sentencing phase. McCoy and Carmichael discuss the fact that all the kid's witnesses have been thrown out for one reason or another, and the only one left is his mother. She offers emotional testimony in which she discusses the boy's alcoholic father and his strict step-father, but McCoy's cross of the mother shows that he had a difficult, but not abusive, childhood. Then the boy himself takes the stand. His high-powered defense attorney (also from Texas) attempts to make Mitch seem sympathetic, but there is something hollow in his apologies. When it's McCoy's turn, he shows that during his testimony a minute earlier, the boy lied about his reason for comitting the crime. He says another boy argued that the delivery man had seen their faces, and so had to be killed, but McCoy establishes that in fact, Mitch himself had made this statement, and that he had sought all along to murder the victim. Things don't look very good for Mitch at this point.

The jury returns its verdict: they sentence him to death. His mom cries out, and McCoy turns around in his seat and gives that shocked look he shoots around post-verdict sometimes. Lewin, in the courtroom, glumly steps out the back door. As the episode ends, the McCoy, Carmichael, and Lewin discuss the likelihood that the boy will be executed soon, and Lewin leaves, saying "God have mercy on our souls."

As I mentioned, this episode is very well-written, and deals with the issue of the death penalty in a nuanced and intelligent way. There are a few other episodes that debate the issue equally well, but this one focuses primarily on the issue of "how young is too young." The meeting of the senior staff offers some great arguments on both sides of the issue, and shows how each side is valid. Ultimately, however, the law trumps personal feelings, and Lewin does what she has to do. You sort of knew that McCoy was going to shred the kid on cross, because the script seemed to require that Mitch be shown to be essentially evil and remorseless. I think this was fair on the part of the writers, because it distills the episode down to its essential points: is 18 too young, even if the kid is a bad kid.

The episode is a fantastic example of how great the show can be. More recent episodes have been focused on plot twists that they forget that the essence of the show, particularly the last half, is the law, and that it is perfectly interesting to show these kinds of moral debates, since they breathe life into the dry text of the laws, and help us see how the system can be tested.

Couple of casting notes: one suspect's defense attorney is played by Clayton LeBouef, best known as Col. Barnfather on Homicide, and who has shown up in a couple of other L&O eps. Also, the lead defense attorney is played by Murphy Guyer, a pretty recognizable character actor who has also done a bunch of L&O episodes.

The episode "rips from the headlines" a troubling trend in NYC from a few years ago: the thrill-killing of food delivery men. A similar incident happened earlier this year, too.

Posted by adm at March 25, 2004 10:37 PM

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